CommerceNext’s newest holiday marketing benchmark report focuses on helping ecommerce executives understand retailers’ perception of the consumer mindset and get a sneak peek at their marketing plans for holiday 2022.
For this qualitative report, CommerceNext partnered with The Commerce Experience Collective (CommX) and surveyed 100 retail and brand executives from various sized companies to understand:
- Retailers’ top concerns for holiday 2022
- Industry expectations for online sales
- How this year’s marketing strategies are shaping up
Sucharita Kodali, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester helped analyze the results and her findings are included throughout the report.
Download the free report here.
Hot Holiday Marketing Takes
One of the key findings from the 2022 holiday benchmark report was that retailers’ top concerns for this year’s holiday marketing for shopping season are completely flipped from last year’s.
Merchants’ top concerns in 2021 were: supply chain, late deliveries and labor shortages. With major global manufacturers now projecting further easing of the supply chain in the latter half of 2022, merchants are focused on a new batch of anxieties: the direction of consumer spending, making ROI and meeting promotional expectations (see below, Chart 6).
While many have seen a rise in economic optimism coming into holiday 2022, inflation and a looming recession are keeping retailers skeptical about the overall success of this year’s holiday season.
In addition to these macroeconomic concerns, there are two other factors keeping merchants on their toes:
- Over-inventory causing retailers to discount to clear stock.
- Privacy changes impacting retailers’ ability to target customers.
With so many macroeconomic and marketing factors still in questionable states, we’re encouraged to see most merchants believe they will maintain their 2021 gains throughout holiday 2022.
Read the full report now to learn more about retailers’ concerns and the holiday marketing strategies they have built to overcome the challenges facing holiday 2022, including:
- Incentivizing early shopping
- Leaning into affiliate and paid search
- And much more!
Looking for more tips to help prepare for holiday marketing 2022? Read the recap of our latest webinar, “Holiday ‘22 Retail Forecast: How to Effectively Reach Today’s Holiday Shopper” to hear how Michael Kors, Kendra Scott, David Yurman and GiftNow are gearing up to have a successful holiday season!
